Corporations are realizing that although they were accountable only to
shareholders or owners in the past, they are becoming increasingly
accountable to a broader range of stakeholders now.
A paradigm
shift is on the move, from accountability to shareholders to
accountability to stakeholders. In the past, corporations have
considered their social responsibility to be adequate if they made a
profit, provided jobs, and perhaps had a donations policy. But, Leonard
J. Brooks on his book entitled Business & Professional Ethics noted,
the world has changed, and now stakeholders expect more. Labor,
society, and environment have become an integral part of a corporation.
It means corporation also have to put responsibility on them and all the
things sum up into a concept known Corporate Social Responsibility
(CSR).
For several years, specific companies and industries have
disclosed their performance on dimensions that they know their
stakeholders are interested in. For example, there are many corporate
repots on environmental performance, and on health and safety
performance. Many corporations are including these reports on their
websites as well as issuing hard copies, or further advertise them.
Brooks noted that the most noteworthy comprehensive CSR reports that
have been made public are those from The Body Shop, The Co-operative
Bank (United Kingdom), and VanCity Credit Union. And the debates
begin.
Advertising CSR is viewed from two different sides. First,
the one sees advertising is a way to report what a corporation has done
to the public—as a part of responsibility and accountability to a
public. It is also a part of marketing tools. The society (read:
customer and/or consumer) are being aware and concern on CSR. They will
prefer to use or consume products that are produced by socially
responsible corporations. The other side sees that advertising CSR has
been twisted. They agreed that CSR have to be reported to the public,
but debated on how the corporation reports it. Budi Wahyuni, a Non
Government Organization activist, in a Corporate Social Responsibility
seminar*, said most corporations advertise its CSR programs only those
support marketing campaign of the product. She noted a corporate
produces hand and body wash soap that advertises the corporate support
to build sanitary facility in a rural school. The value of the support
is much less than the cost of the company to advertise it on mass media.
She questioned whether that was a CSR program or a pure advertisement.
The
argument above is logical. It also should be questioned why the
corporation only put CSR program into several products those are
produced by them, and criticized that, on the contrary, another several
products use a tend-into-discrimination campaign (directly demonstrate
that a white lady more beautiful than the others, shown by a man chose
the whitest lady among three). The Sustainability Reporting Guidelines
[Delhi] G3 version, Global Reporting Initiative** on January 2006 noted
that Marketing Communication is also has to be socially responsible. The
guidelines include that aspect into a chapter noted as Product
Responsibility (PR).
It is true that CSR is more than giving a
donation. Corporate Social Responsibility is running in every single
part of the corporation, from the production, labor practices, society,
environment, to public communication.
-Aries Setiadi-
*Seminar
on Corporate Social Responsibility was held in March 25, 2006 at
Auditorium Magister Managemen, Universitas Gadjah Mada Yogyakarta
organized by Ikatan Keluarga Mahasiswa Manajemen (IKAMMA), Faculty of
Economics, Universitas Gadjah Mada Yogyakarta.
** Global Reporting Initiative can be viewed at http://www.grig3.org.
An Indonesian, therefore I am.
